Founded for people who felt a call to religious life but were too physically infirm to enter an austere order. Members would sanctify themselves by prayer and good works, and would help the salvation of souls by as prayer, self-sacrifice, and charity of any kind compatible with the Rule. Retreats and spiritual exercises were offered to those desirous of greater perfection. Canonically erected into a religious order, its active ministry abandoned and enclosure adopted, under the Rule of Saint Augustine in 1618; constitutions by the founder. The method enjoined by SaintFrancis secures the benefit of the religious life to those who lack physical strength for the usual corporal austerities of the cloister by substituting the spirit of interior mortification. Boarding-schools are attached to many of the houses, e.g., that of Georgetown, DC, founded in 1789, for secondary education. There are three grades among the sisters: choir-nuns, associate nuns (dispensed from the Office), and lay-sisters. Each convent is governed by a superior under the bishop of the diocese and independently of all other houses, there being no mother-house. Doubts regarding observance are referred to the house of Annecy. The order has houses in various countries of the world.